Do you make your kids take care of their pets?

For the moment, my daughter is only 2 but she does like to be helpful by getting things for me - although getting her to actually hand them over is a different story! I think a child of 5 is capable of pouring the cat some food or filling the water bowls. Rabbits are easy enough that just about any age could do it - give the kids the scraps & ask them to put it in the cage, even when you move the hutch to a new grash patch & ask a child to rake up the poop wouldn't be overly difficult. I think you're doing the right thing, if kids want things - especially living things they will eventually have to learn to take care of them coz they cant always expect Mum to do it all for them. We're getting my daughter a ferret coz she likes the ones her Nanna has - i'll end up taking care of it though, but it's not too bad because even though they're cute (to some) they have sharp teeth, are excellent escape artists & i'd rather be the one that gets bitten! If we happen to have fish again though, getting her to help with feeding & cleaning will definitely be something i'll do, i think it's a good thing to teach kids coz they wont always have their Mum around to do it all for them & i'm sre you don't want to ve visiting them when you're in your 60's just to tidy up after their cat!!!

Man...if you're mean, I'm like an evil dictator! LOL... Uh, yeah... even my almost 4 year old has to help with the animals. Every morning, we get up, open up the barn to let the chickens out, the "baby" helps me feed the chickens and ducks, the older two (8 year old twins) feed the cats and get the chickens and ducks water, and we do it again in the evening. I'm pretty "mean", but if there is a particular animal that is hers, it would be "given" to one of the other children or given to an appropriate home. Then she'd get a good lesson about "her" day...LOL, I'd take a break and let her do "mom's day" chores...then she could argue with me about "her" day.... I probably don't have to tell you that the boys only argued with me once about this, do I? Good Luck!